#267 Historic Abandoned Ottawa Mine and Mill

in the slo-can area today and uh we're we've been joined by rick and he's taking us for a tour of these mines up in this area so the first place on our tour here is the ottawa mills we're gonna have a look at this mill and there's a bunch of other mines in this area we're gonna have a look at that so we got a bunch of mines we're gonna check out and i will show you uh anything up in the springer creek area there's about four mines we're gonna get to we can show you what we find so there's um the ottawa the arlington the meteor and one other one that i can't remember but we'll find them all for you most of it's probably mental you don't like dark places that are wet and your claustrophobic you have a bunch of phobias and stuff but it's not going to be the place for you well that's pretty impressive not in too bad of shape either as far as an old mill goes yeah that was a pump there's some nice little floatation tanks and cells here oh maybe it was actually uh rebuilt again a certain period of time maybe they took the machinery out and then they put it back in i don't know so this is a froth floatation set up here this is the uh what they do is they put the the minerals in here and then they agitate it and blow air in there and it makes a froth and these skimmers just skim the froth off which is where the golden stuff is yeah pretty neat mill oh there's a ball of mill huh nice big one too looks like the rats have been making a nest in there what else do we got here oh yeah this looks like the sodium metabisulfate went into this uh they added to the solution here somebody salvaged the boards price lumber these days no surprise there's a big orb in here now let's get over to the other side and this is one of the coolest little mills i've seen for a long time appears to be in pretty good shape see we weren't expecting this we thought it would just be some old foundations and stuff let's let me sign find a pretty neat little mill lots of neat stuff here this is a slurry tank here i heard that the government leased this building the ottawa mail for the um that housed up to 100 japanese in here but obviously i don't think that's just an old wives tale oh yeah yeah they're in lemon creek in new denver and sand it yeah okay so when do you think this mill was last operating probably 50 years ago oh yeah yeah i would guess nice shape it was built by lessors actually hopefully arlington was basically shut down around 1920 1929 yeah didn't open up again until the 40s or 50s probably ran for a couple of years maybe yeah this is flotation and ball both yeah i see the ball mill there yeah so that's the floatation tank right there yeah no i see the ball mill there yeah yeah the ball mill's down there yeah yeah so where do you think that they uh got the ore for this mill arlington and the ottawa okay that's right where you guys are going tomorrow where we'll visit the access today oh cool so this is a gold a gold mine mostly silver mostly silver 200 it was originally 200 ounces a ton both of them okay so so they had uh galena in here led zinc silver yeah yeah yeah and a lot of these mines actually made more money off lead than anything else but it's not too sexy people only talk about leg and occasionally zinc too yeah if you're close to the water yeah yeah well back in the day the zinc was kind of a problem because it was a big problem particularly in the sand and mine stuff yeah a lot of times they were penalized when they took zinc to the smelters because it's difficult for them to take it out yeah correct yeah yeah yeah there's the ball mill a nice little ball mill very similar to the um the one we see in um in ainsworth but it was similar size really that big too many yeah yeah very similar oh there's a crusher primary crusher here oh wow jaw crusher a pioneer jaw crusher wow look at the gate here a really nice gate yeah looks like it almost worked so this is a gyro it's a gyrite it's a gyrating crusher i think they call the gyre yeah another type of a crusher oh yeah this one this kind of articulates back and forth gyratory crushers what's that called that's what that's called again nice shape huh oh it's just great that we can document some of this stuff well before it's all gone i mean yeah some of these two years ago the last time i was here and it's amazing how much stuff is gone yeah well uh you know the rimac was a good uh or the hb mine was all pretty much all complete not that many years ago and uh we were just back there just completely burned there's nothing left there at all well they've heard this since last year right that what was left it's burnt several times yeah yeah this little gizmo was kind of pretty fascinating so obviously what this did is it added a small amount of powder to a solution see this wheel went around there's a cup in it you can't see it now and i dumped the solution into here with some water and then put it into this tank so as i was running a small amount of that powder or whatever it was it would add to the solution here's the other ball mill so it's a pretty small one there's the clutch that dries it's kind of interesting got like pads to drive it a little miniature ball mill all right so we're at the auto online which is the we were to the middle yesterday and this apparently has a whole bunch of different levels so we found the audit and we're just kind of looking around for some buildings there's a a big bin here with the there was a compressor tank but some people cut some of the steel out used for something else i guess big air tank and uh there's a deutz uh diesel are you the queen there yeah nice little chair let's see right by the mine and it's supposed to be full of artifacts oh look at there's a railway here that was a good sign huh that's pretty close in elevation to the other one similar kind of a gate hmm lots of truck here oh there's a a mine car the bottom part of it looks a little collapsed makes it feel a little bit of air just enough to get you into trouble i think i think you could possibly dig that out but today though somebody could dig that out let's have a look at the mine buildings well that looks like a part of uh electric uh meal electric train locomotive what do you want to call it for the battery boxes oh that little shop in here to service the locomotives hmm you know what that was some kind of a milling machine see too much of any real interest in here some engines here all the parts are laying around that looks like part of a locomotive yeah that's what that is get in here though breaking our necks oh yeah this is the wash house concrete floor big trough there so they call that the dry miners would have been in here some showers in here lots of waste rock here so it's likely to be pretty substantial oh not too bad yeah there's only like a foot of water the tracks are still here we're going to try to find some of these other levels later [Music] let's see if we can find here look looks like there's some rats in here pretty cool wall here sure the football hanging on the hanging wall i guess what kind of excitement to look forward to how much swimming are we gonna have to do so this is a silver mining area not much gold here lots of silver though rick says something like 200 ounces to the tun pretty rich for silver there's a a peg into the back there they call it the back and they put those in there so they hook up their air lines and whatever else the airline's on the floor now but the wire hardly broken down so they just put a little drill holes in there and then hammer those pegs in there you can see that piece of wire to hold your air lines up water lines sometimes power going back here for lights or however they have set up there we go there should dry again they had a big air compressor outside here so we know that they uh had lots of air going back here i don't know just to build a tunnel or to do some money or what so we're here to find out pretty straight you know so you can tell you wouldn't think they're pulling any kind of a drift but that almost looks like a little quartz vein there but maybe not enough to worry about a lot easier the ones we've been going into the monster mega mine you have to shoot gotta climb down 250 feet or something even start exploring for this one you just walk right in that's pretty easy a little bit of water but you know i don't know if you're used to wet mines it's not really a problem i kind of prefer them over the hot dusty ones you know down south in the desert there it's really dusty it's really hard on the lungs and it's really hot in there you're pouring sweat all the time over here it's just a perfect temperature a little water never hurt anyone have a shower just about every night on a scare of water for your breath the middle of july these mines are not that far in the ground they're not affected by the earth's core but generally speaking the temperature of the mine is sort of the average temperature outside so this being a more northern climate you'll see you know cooler temperatures than you would down south so that's what you don't see that kind of an average temperature when you get down south average temperature quite warm because it doesn't cool off much so the mines are way harder for the long waves i don't think we can see the outside anymore well you can you can still see the outside quite a ways back eh there's a tiny little deviation but not enough to block the you block this block the light so i guess we don't need any paint just yet should be good for a while we don't usually ever have to use painter marking it's just in the monster mega mine being so extensive it's kind of an exception [Music] oh god a bunch of chorus apples drilling station yeah just some plants they did some they had a diamond drill here so they're doing some drilling in here looking for minerals kind of a nice looking sample maybe a nicer museum let's stick it in my pocket maybe we'll climb up there on the way back have a look and see if it goes anywhere starting to get a little more interesting an old chest oh what is that oh it's uh dynamite this is 75 it's kind of funny oh my god tiny sticks little yeah okay i would have thought it was putty but it says 75 percent on this well never got a bunch of track in here a little storage area small track there's some electric blasting fuse we'll see a blessing cap on it yeah not the skinniest little sticks of dynamite i've ever seen foresight 75 well there's a skip heavy duty one too now we'll stick to the right since we don't have no ribbon we won't get lost of course you always say that i don't think there's ever been a time where i said i was going to get lost and i get really soft stuff let's keep going but i think we're going to end up we're not going to go any further we're going to end up in there anyways because there was a right-hand branch our left-hand branch i don't think you want to go any further or didn't really eat one of this one there's a the next branch to the right probably joins up to where we are it's all kind of falling down here pretty scary see that square set there over here there's a square timber right here i think maybe this is the original way they went in maybe that claps and then the next branch just back here to the right i probably went around it we'll do that lots of times if we get into an area that the software collapses rather than cleaning out we'll just go around a big pillar in the middle of this room here horseshoe going up higher levels that's interesting lots of possible places we can hike up to it's really starting to branch out here isn't it oh lots of air here now timbered sections well this is turning out to be a pretty cool mine another worksheet there again we're going to stick to the right huh many many branches here footprints neat gate race going up look too crazy what do you think about going up there maybe too hard with it [Music] could be an easy way to get to another level because it's like a man way there sometimes it feels when you're going for a long ways like this it feels like you're going to come off the other side of the mountain or something there's stairs going up that's interesting probably not in very good shape though yeah this is pretty easy not very steep pursuing oh there's a beautiful set of stairs up here yeah come on up here you're gonna have to go around them stairs but yeah this is uh this looks cool in here it couldn't get any better than this we're walking up and it gets a little slimy and everything but with some boards on here makes it really nice one of the nicest set of stairs i've ever seen this is definitely going to go to another level i would think i'll test this out it's a little bit higher but no it's all good it's a nice the way they built this pretty deluxe yeah the only way it could be any better is if there was an elevator i don't get too much further some little clops that's for sure nope she's blocked can't get through sharon it's blocked it's blocked there's no way through too bad we're went back to the next branch and then to the right this is just a little place where they would just park the um empty muck cars right put your empties in here and they take one at a time to fill up the face you can see lots of water coming out of here uh air coming out of here water coming out of here we can hear a bit of noise so we know there's water coming from the manly that's the old style shoot in that look at the handle of it let's see there's another cool gate manly beside it oh what's the end of the deposit i could feel the here [Music] it was blocked off so yeah so they had a collapse up there and they blocked it off the manly okay now we got another branch here some antifreeze what they use that for is they put it in the in the lines to keep the girls from freezing up in newer times obviously i'm just gonna have a little look up here i think it's just a little storage area i'm not gonna go anywhere but it could be wrong yeah it goes this way there's the one that goes to the right and comes right back where we just came from but that wouldn't go anywhere seems like you know close to where the silver is there's also lots of serpentine you see all these collapses where there are mining and here's another one huh but you can't really get any further you get into this serpentonite seems like the the silver or it might have been against the serpentine so it doesn't look very good does it i don't think i'm going to get very far really loose and scabby lots of serpentine here it's all kind of collapsed see a muck sheet here so that means it's probably going to be very close to the end the mug sheet is where they blasted the rock onto yeah first one we've seen so far it looks to be in less than pristine condition [Music] that's it yeah [Music] so that's an aluminum airline and they're cool because you can just pack them in though they're really light it keeps coming this way probably goes around the end of that serp zone that we just [Music] backed out or trying to get around it yeah lots of drifting in here huh maybe another chunk of aluminum line there oh that's been a fun this has been a really fun uh mine to explore oh yeah there you go there's aluminum from the top so huh aluminum line going up there didn't look that easy to get up there coming to the end of the drift here there's a zone there they mined up look at the the head wall there that's going to be endeavor that could be as you're getting up there i don't know about that maybe we're going to try and go up this little raise here see how it goes and then if it's good i'll get sharon to follow me a little wet but not too bad oh the ladder is good so far noise until the run breaks so hopefully this manual will go up to another level now this one gotta be careful this time see that rock is barely sitting there that comes down okay watch out i'm going to push this down no now maybe i'll try not to [Music] nope no i'm going to come back down it's too scabby a whole bunch of loose rock up there over okay watch out for loose rocks coming down i could have maybe i made it but it's quite steep and there's big rocks at the top they're just kind of barely hanging in there so as i was going over a big rock they might have come loose what's that okay tell me when you're clear i'm just hanging on a pipe here that aluminum airline goes up here kind of steep here but then it looks like it flattens out might be a level we'll see lots of loose stuff that can come down though especially down that slide you're out of the way okay if it wasn't for this pipe you know get up here like a pole vaulter here huh maybe a level here a little steep here now all right that's a little bit huh oh my god you're by here lots of pockets going up i don't think it's going to go anywhere though no that's it right there let's see we'll go for a ground fork cycle pretty skinny i'm not gonna go up through that okay i'll go back down i'm steep here all right a little hole there let's have a look at that hole probably looking down on the tunnel maybe even another way to get down everything seems kind of connected here [Applause] the timbering in here there we go i bet you that's it as far as going up places i think we've explored all these connecting areas [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] hi everyone thanks for joining us this week we have a show every week so we'll see you next week check out our new merch page don't forget to like and subscribe music is by the audits so [Music] you

Channel: Exploring Abandoned Mines

Views: 15,316

Rating: 4.9702601 out of 5

Keywords: mine carts, antique, exploring abandoned mines, exploring abandoned mines in bc, frank schlichting, dangerous mines, abandoned mines, bc mines, gold, machines, explore, adventure, exciting, gold mining, #gold, gold mine, gold mines, # exploring abandoned mines, exploring mines, mine shaft, minecraft, mine exploration, abandoned gold mine, abandoned and forgoton places, underground, mining, hard rock mines, climbing, mining equipment, cerro gordo, Ghost Town Living, Ottawa, Mine, mill

Id: -6dobtRSy0w

Length: 34min 7sec (2047 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 06 2021